


Thou shalt be born again with me

by Cymbidia



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Everyone is named either Jean or Louis, Gen, Grantaire is Saint-Just, Humor, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Painter Grantaire, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29057760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cymbidia/pseuds/Cymbidia
Summary: "In the Convention, Enjolras would have been Saint-Just."—A Group Which Barely Missed Becoming HistoricIt is not Enjolras but rather Grantaire who is the reincarnation of Louis Antoine de Saint-Just. This changes very little. Wherein Saint-Grantaire gets upset about Napoleon, paints frivolous Rococo styled pictures in an age where Neoclassicism is dying into Romanticism, and drinks lots of absinthe.
Relationships: Enjolras & Grantaire (Les Misérables), Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 8





	Thou shalt be born again with me

**Author's Note:**

> This is technically "crack treated seriously" in that the premise is a bit absurd, but none of the humour and all of the angst comes from the premise, so. I got rid of that tag because it was misleading. There's parts that are very much light-hearted but the humour doesn't arise out of the cracky premise.
> 
> Content warnings: Grantaire is somewhat of an alcoholic. There is also a rehashing of Le Cabuc being shot that is about as graphic as canon.

There are two factions in their little group, the Musain chapter of Les Amis de l'ABC. The workers that congregated at the Corinthe were vaguely adjacent to the power struggle, but only a gaggle of students in the Musain with nothing better to do - and Feuilly, who was too good a sport by far - ever took it so seriously.

The clever pun of the name of the society had not begun that way, but had been invented to explain it after the fact. At its inception, the ABC in their name stood for a firm and ardent belief that actions, not names, spoke for the character and beliefs of both men and societies.

Enjolras lead one faction of the struggle. Named Louis-Philippe by his unfortunately foresighted parents in honour of the Pear's père, and with the tragic middle name of Charles, he represented the Louis faction. Courfeyrac, bearing the neutral Jean-Baptiste, lead the other. Jehan Prouvaire, who was Marie-Louise Joséphine Prouvaire in legal documents, had outraged the Louis faction by abandoning his Christian name in favour of first plain "Jean" and then medieval "Jehan". 

As a fence sitter, Louis-Jean-François Grantaire found favour in neither the Louis faction nor the Jean faction. Bossuet, that bald Eagle of Meaux, who was blessed with the simple and singular prénom of Pierre, was his opposite, always being persuaded to hyphenate his forename in favour of one faction or the other. Morte Aux Aristocrates Bahorel watched on, greatly amused by it all. After July of 1830, Enjolras stonily forbade forenames at meetings, and any man who called him Louis-Phillipe instead of Citoyen Enjolras was subjected to the frostiest of cold shoulders.

As an artist, Grantaire also was scorned on all sides, by both his master, Le Gros, and by his fellow members of the ABC Feuilly, a fan painter, as well as Prouvaire and Bahorel, both Romantics. Grantaire, like the painter Lagrenée for whom he had been named, produced works in the style of that dying era of the Rococo before messianic David rejuvenated French art with the Neoclassical. Feuilly's fan paintings carried on the frivolity of Rococo, which Feuilly himself, an admirer of David, despised. It had to be said that Grantaire emulated the conventional Boucher and Natoire the most, but there was something in the great smirking irony of his frivolities that pointed to the dying gasp of Rococo, just as Le Gros now signified the dying gasp of the Neoclassical. 

Diderot had once said of Lagrenée the elder that his larger pieces did not have the spirit of his miniatures, or something to that effect, and this attribute Grantaire also inherited, along with the forenames. Grantaire did not generally work in miniature, so all his works lacked spirit. Well, it was an insult to Lagrenée to be compared to Grantaire, but the man was dead, so he could hardly protest himself. Grantaire signed all his works with a capital R, because he was such a creature of puns and irony that he reduced even his own name to a joke.

All of this is to say, then, that he preferred to be called none of his forenames, turned his surname into a joke, and when he went to prostitutes, he made them call him Antoine.

He also was known to despise David, despite the man being Baron Gros' master. He had once gotten so agitated during a shouting match about David's depiction of the Tennis Court Oath with Gros that he drank almost an entire bottle of brandy, broke into Gros' studio, and then threw up on Gros' favourite rug.

In terms of his politics, Grantaire was entirely unlike his friends. He wept at the memory of certain revolutionary martyrs but thumbed his nose at others. He loathed the Restoration and the so called King of the French quietly but spat and cursed violently at even the briefest mention of Napoleon, and sobbed inconsolably the one time that an acquaintance of the society had compared his looks to Danton and the youth of Enjolras to Saint-Just. He had burst into tears, howled abuse, and made such a nuisance of himself that Bahorel had been forced to physically restrain him and carry him out of the room. He had then drunken lethal amounts of absinthe, slinked into the rooms of a lorette he subsidised, and disappeared for two weeks afterwards.

Despite his many strong political opinions and his ability to parrot the political philosophies of any classical or modern writer with reflexive ease, he also staunchly refused to believe in the revolution. He thought that the world was full of injustice, and decried it, and hated monarchists, but refused to believe that a revolution could be successful, or remain successful, after the previous attempt had descended into the Directory, then the Empire. He knew everything wrong with the world, wept for it all, railed against it verbally, but did not for a moment think to take action.

The leader of the group, Enjolras, disdained and pitied him in turns. Sometimes discussions between the two of them could almost said to be amiable, but an unwary word about some Jacobin or other and Grantaire would be off frothing and foaming and spewing his cynical nonsense again, and Enjolras, who respected Robespierre and Saint-Just a great deal, would turn stony.

For his part, Grantaire was drawn to Enjolras like a thirsty man drawn to water, or a wingless bird to the sky. He adored and venerated the passion of Enjolras and his other friends, and basked in their radiance and belief like a lizard basking in the sun. He was generally better received when he propped his head up with one hand and nursed sleepily on a bottle of wine held in the other, silently enjoying the companionship of his friends, than when he gave one of his incomprehensible tirades against the world and bemoaned how misunderstood he was.

He was not with the society a certain fateful July, but had disappeared for the duration of the fighting. He returned smelling of a wine shop, claiming that he had been out carousing for the three days. The gunpowder and blood saturating his wrist cuffs told a different story. When Enjolras confronted him, Grantaire had explained that his dishevelment was thanks to a duel with a jealous lover over a fickle, heartless woman that he had once loved, and that he had lost and the bitch had gone back to her man, and so if Enjolras could go and be radiant somewhere else, preferably far enough away he would stop aggravating Grantaire's hangover. Enjolras, sleepless from days of fighting, similarly bathed in blood and gun powder and absolutely furious at the installation of Louis-Philippe, had snapped at Grantaire, and Grantaire had snapped back something about inevitability and the futility of it all, and Bossuet and Courfeyrac had to bodily pull Grantaire and Enjolras from each other.

Then Grantaire had started weeping, like a little child, and excused himself to drink some more. 

Prouvaire let it slip afterwards that he thought he'd seen Grantaire briefly while the Hôtel de Ville was being taken, smiling savagely though his face was covered in tears and blood, wielding a bayonet with red on the blade and crying "À bas le roi! Vive la Rèpublique!" According to Prouvaire, it had taken him several seconds to recognise the man, because half Grantaire's face had been covered in blood from a scratch on the brow, and because Grantaire had been radiant with conviction, showing more life and motivation in those few glimpsed seconds than Prouvaire had previously seen from him in all the years of their acquaintance combined.

"Perhaps I mistook someone else for him," Prouvaire had added dubiously. "Lately he seems more like himself than ever, and I would not attribute that kind of passion to the man I know." No one else had caught sight of a radiant and savage man who resembled Grantaire while there, so it was given up as a mystery.

For a long, torturous year after that July, Grantaire quit wine completely and drank absinthe and brandy like they were water. He got into a fistfight with Marius Pontmercy over Napoleon. No, rather, he had punched Pontmercy after a stray remark, then collapsed to the floor and began weeping and ranting about Napoleon to the indifferent floorboards. He no longer made eyes at every feminine creature that so much as walked past him. His longing glances at Enjolras were now filled with anguished despair as well as tenderness.

The drinking tapered off after Gros got fed up with the shaking of his hands that made painting impossible and locked Grantaire in the garret of Chez Gros for three long months, until he could be trusted not to kill himself with drink again. Grantaire eventually returned to his usual self, which is to say, an ugly cynical husk of a man, but the light of his friends that once comforted him now brought only pain. The irregularity was excused by his friends, as many of them also found their temperaments stained by the violence and disappointment of the July Days.

Now, on the eve of the next great revolution, Grantaire was insufferable.

"It is a wonder that you have not caught the cholera yourself," Joly said. He used the tip of his cane to prod at the carcass wafting despair and cynicism into the air in the manner of a pungent cheese stinking up a room. "You carry your own unwholesome miasma with you everywhere you go."

"Mmmmph," replied Grantaire eloquently. He had returned to the absinthe after things began to heat up in the unseasonably hot April of this year.

"I want to commission a work from you," Joly said, and prodded him again. Grantaire raised his head from the pillow of his arms and stared at him with bleary suspicion.

"I charge more for friends," he replied haughtily. Nevertheless, he sat up and looked expectantly at Joly for more details.

"I envision a fête galante of our society," Joly explained, sitting down opposite Grantaire. "Not too big, but respectably sized. Instead of aristos enjoying an idyllic pastoral fantasy built on the backs of oppression and exploitation, it will be a band of strapping young revolutionaries cavorting through the gardens of the Luxembourg, on their way to overthrow the monarchy. My mother promised an additional fifty francs for guns and ammunition for this month's allowance, with another fifty more if I should consent to be painted, and I quote, 'in a way that shows off what a sweet little cherub you are, so that I might see you as you are in heaven after you get shot trying to overthrow the rotten old fruit.' Think Liberty Leading the People, but frivolous and Rococo and in glowy pastel colours."

"That is... Quite a vision," Grantaire acknowledged, gulping down some water and eating the last forgotten oyster from his dinner in a vain attempt to sober up.

"I got the idea after I saw the rude caricature you did of us as a band of republican satyrs that you gave to Légle for his birthday. And I want a group scene not a solitary portrait because my dear Musichetta would never stop making fun of me otherwise. Make sure Bossuet's bald head gleams prettily "

"I..." Grantaire stared longingly at the dregs of his absinthe. "You didn't arrange for any keepsakes in '30."

"I didn't have time then. 30 took me by surprise."

Grantaire contemplated this pessimistically, and shrugged.

"Alright," he said, "but you're going to have to convince the others to model."

Joly twirled his cane with a flourish. "Mère will be so pleased," he beamed.

"I will make some sketches with ideas about the composition and bring it tomorrow morning," Grantaire promised. He didn't have anything better to do. Irma Boissy wasn't speaking to him, neither was Floréal. Violette Martin, once his most faithful model and the most disdainful of Lorettes, had spurned him and all her other callers, and married an unsuccessful poet from Spain. He had another commission he was supposed to be working on, but he was bored by the pedestrian subject matter. Thus, he said farewell to Joly, paid for his meal, and sauntered home with ideas already brewing in his mind.

He stayed at a set of furnished rooms very near the Musain, and he dove into sketches straightaway. When he appeared at the back room of the café the next morning, he had a number of possible arrangements for the composition of the piece.

All members of their chapter of the society were present. A secret meeting had been called, though it appeared to not have started yet. Enjolras was very seriously studying a map of Paris and some kind of list written in code upon a bit of torn paper. Combeferre was doing sums in a ledger. Joly stood near him, having just handed the fifty extra livres his mother had contributed to their cause unto Combeferre's safekeeping

"Good morning," Grantaire breezed in and deposited himself in his usual seat. He stole a bit of bread from someone's abandoned plate and poured out a cup of wine from a bottle that Louisson had preemptively left for him.

"Good morning," said Bossuet, staunching a cut on his knuckles. "Mind the edges of the new pamphlets, they have already defeated me soundly."

Grantaire wasn't sure how Bossuet managed to get a paper cut on the back of his hand, but he shrugged and agreed. He had no interest in the pamphlets.

He murmured about the commissioned painting with Joly, who was indifferent to his sketched proposals and left everything to his discretion except the demand that Bahorel was to be dressed as he had been in '30, in the Duchesse de Berry's ball gown and hat. Grantaire agreed without protest, as the dress in question was innocently stashed away at Gros' studio amongst other costumes and props, where no one except Grantaire was certain where it came from.

After some time, the meeting was called to order, and matters of practicality and logistics were outlined one by one. The rising heat of April had sweltered into fuel for rebellion, and theirs was only one of many societies holding urgent, secretive meetings at sympathetic cafés.

Enjolras began with a semiopaque preamble about the state of things, which solidified into instructions to take a census, of a sort, of certain allied groups, and to stoke their tempers and reaffirm commitments.

Grantaire picked idly at his sketches with a pencil, until an opportunity presented itself.

He did not want to take any revolutionary action. He would rather die. No, that wasn't true. He didn't want to die. He would rather drown his soul in absinthe and stuff his ears against the suffering and misery of the world.

Nevertheless, it chafed upon him, that of everyone in the room, he should be the only one passed over. Enjolras had assigned even Pontmercy a task, when the boy had deserted them, and refused to put any trust in Grantaire, who never missed a meeting. It was outrageous. It was unfair. It was to be expected, and perfectly pragmatic, but Grantaire, who had, in another life been—. Well. No. Nevermind that, that was all a dream that he had long since woken from. He was simply mildly annoyed to have been written off.

What about me?" said Grantaire. "I'm here."

"You?"

"Me."

"You, indoctrinate republicans! You, warm up hearts that have grown cold in the name of principle!"

"Why not?"

"Are you good for anything?"

"I have a vague ambition in that direction," said Grantaire.

"You don't believe in anything."

"I believe in you."

"Grantaire, will you do me a service?"

"Anything. I'd black your boots."

"Well, don't meddle with our affairs. Sleep yourself sober from your absinthe."

"You're an ingrate, Enjolras."

"You, the man to go to the Barriere du Maine! You, capable of it!"

"I am capable of descending the Rue de Gres, of crossing the Place Saint-Michel, of sloping through the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, of taking the Rue de Vaugirard, of passing the Carmelites, of turning into the Rue d'Assas, of reaching the Rue du Cherche-Midi, of leaving behind me the Conseil de Guerre, of pacing the Rue des Vielles Tuileries, of striding across the boulevard, of following the Chaussee du Maine, of passing the barrier, and entering Richefeu's. I am capable of it. My shoes are capable of it."

"Do you know anything of the comrades who meet at Richefeu's?"

"Not much. We only address each other as thou."

"What will you say to them?"

"I will speak to them of Robespierre. Of Danton. Of Mountains and principles."

"You?"

"Me. You don't give me enough credit. When I try, I can be terrible. I have read Prudhomme," and here he made a rude gesture at the name, "I know the Social Contract, I know my constitution of the Year One by heart. Do you think me illiterate? I can list every president of the Convention. I can recite it all. The Rights of Man and Citizen, the sovereignty of the people...sapristi! I am the most ardent of Robespierrists. If it wouldn't leave me weeping, I'd be able to twaddle on about the Ventôse Decrees for six hours by the clock, watch in hand."

"Be serious," said Enjolras.

"I am wild," replied Grantaire.

Enjolras meditated for a few moments, and made the gesture of a man who has come to a resolution.

"Grantaire," he said gravely, "I consent to try you. You shall go to the Barriere du Maine."

Grantaire went out, and five minutes later he returned. He had gone home to put on a Robespierre waistcoat.

"Red," said he as he entered, and he looked intently at Enjolras. Then, with the palm of his shaking hand, he laid the two scarlet lapels of the waistcoat across his breast.

And stepping up to Enjolras, he whispered in his ear:

"Be easy."

He jammed his hat on resolutely and departed.

When Enjolras wandered over to Richefeu's after his own task was done, the smoking room was filled with the sound of dominoes.

* * *

While his friends were busy with their preparations in those months of April and May, Grantaire occupied himself with Joly's commission.

He now understood how annoying it must have been, for the portraitists who had once painted —— certain leaders of the Republic ——and had been forced to paint while those leaders refused to stop working. He grudgingly acknowledged that Prud'hon and David had been, at the very least, patient with him.

His initial lofty idea of pastiching Delacroix and portraying Enjolras with his breast heroically bared and his backlit armpit as the centre of the piece was foiled by a stern refusal to put on a dress. Bahorel was instead substituted, the ballgown of de Berry falling off his shoulders and exposing his white shirt beneath. Out of respect for the lady paying for the portrait, this ballgowned Marianne was not the focus. Joly dominated the picture, dressed in his finest new clothes. He had a cockade pinned to his lapel, a bright Phrygian cap, and a huge tricolour flag. In place of his usual cane, he held a bayonet that was wound with a very adorable snake. His face was angelic. His curls fluttered out from under the cap, and he could have been a cherub. Beside him was Bossuet. At first glance it may have seemed that the man was staring up at either the flag or Joly in admiration, but closer study would reveal that he had simply tripped and fallen over. His tophat was depicted as having flown off his head, and the apex of his scalp gleamed with all the light of heaven. Thus were each member of their merry band portrayed, in some symbolic or humorous representation of their characters, and in conversation with Delacroix. Enjolras was the only member wearing both coat and tophat, and he was the least rumpled of the party. Not even the intolerably plain knot of his sober black cravat was askew. He clenched a musket, staring forwards and upwards with beatific seriousness.

As for Grantaire, he was the trouserless fellow with one sock. There was a bottle of absinthe in his hand, and the cockade pinned to his cap was hopelessly askew. Rather than lying on his back, he stumbled along at the tail of the procession, half turned so that his shapely thighs and backside were on display, and other more sensitive parts of his anatomy obscured.

The band of friends stretched out across the roll of a little hillock that was really a barricade, and in the distance figures with rifles and muskets blurred into a forest. Little putti frolicked around them, thin and haggard and ugly, with the faces of the street gamins that hung around the society. A true Marianne decorated the side of Bahorel, and overshadowed his ballgown with her stark white robes and limp unwashed hair. Marius's little hanger on, Eponine Thenadier, had been the one to model for it. Grantaire had seen her loitering about, away from Marius for once and sulking about it, and had paid her to model in wine, oysters, and a trip to the opera, as well as the begrudging inclusion of Marius in the picture.

The finished painting was revealed to cheers and jeers at a meeting. Grantaire made a nuisance of himself, peacocking about. He was very proud of how saccharine it was, and of the vast quantities of pale pinks and blues that he'd managed to slather onto the canvas while still retaining a coherent picture. It was dreamy and frivolous, and looked more like they were frolicking through some revolutionary heaven than it resembled any kind of serious or violent uprising.

"You have watered down the tricolour most egregiously," Bossuet observed cheerfully.

"Pardieu, I have not!" Grantaire put on a look of great affront. "It is a matter of lighting! Uncultured brute."

"You are wasted painting bankers and bowls of fruit," was the pronunciation of Enjolras. "You should have become a satirist."

Grantaire shuddered, disturbed, and wrapped the painting back up.

"I shall have this delivered to mother posthaste," Joly took the prize from him. "Payment will arrive as soon as she receives it."

Grantaire waved him off. "No payment necessary. Add whatever it is that she sends to the fund for ammunition. Let it never be said that I am not willing to make great sacrifices at the altar of revolution." He laughed at this, and returned to his bottle.

* * *

Grantaire came to the Rue de la Chanvrerie almost entirely by accident. One moment, he was thinking about locking himself in and drinking through the planned uprising, like he'd claimed to have done in '30, and the next, as if by some dark magic or demonic possession, he was breakfasting at the Corinthe. The barricades sprung up around him, he did not seek them out. Thankfully, the Corinthe, though rapidly dwindling in furniture, still possessed vast amounts of wine and absinthe for his pleasure.

The upstairs room where he made his nest of drunkenness had a window that looked out on the barricade below. A great disquiet came over him, one that could not be stifled with drink. The fact of the matter was, that he never went anywhere without two pistols at his waist, enough cartridges to threaten the integrity of his suspender belts, and three knives of varying sizes. That morning he had also set aside his trusty rattan dress cane for a sword cane of polished hickory. He had not gone unarmed for a single moment of his life since he was old enough to have his own room. He did not really fear death, but he never again wanted to be cornered. It seemed that his preparations were not simply paranoia after all.

He supposed that he could take out his weapons, and fight. He had fought at the taking of the Hôtel de Ville in '30, despite his memories of that place. He chuckled grimly, and sucked down another mouthful of absinthe. He had no sugar and no spoon for it, but he was not drinking for enjoyment.

Enjolras appeared briefly in the doorway, evidently making some kind of survey of the rooms of the café. He left a number of glass bottles by the doorway. Grantaire raised a glass to him, and drank.

"'Those who make revolutions by halves do nothing but dig their own tombs,'" said Enjolras. "Get up. Fight."

Grantaire let out a horrible, wheezing laugh at this apt quotation.

"Saint-Just did nothing by halves, and yet he still rests in a tomb of his own making."

"He is a martyr."

"His death did not elevate his Republic. He did not die in the storming of the Bastille or during the vote on the execution of Louis Capet. He died so that the Republic might repudiate the revolution and degenerate into the corrupt Directory. What is his martyrdom good for? The constitution of Year One was never implemented. The Ventôse Decrees were not even backed by Robespierre. Had the convention agreed to seize and redistribute the ill begotten wealth of the old order... well. No use in could have beens. It would have been better had he died fighting. When he went to the guillotine, he died the same ignominious death as counterrevolutionaries and aristocrats."

"He shall inspire the generations to come. The downfall of Robespierre was a necessary error that future republics will learn to take heed of."

"What will they learn? That nothing, not even relentless Terror, can overcome reactionaries? The Committee achieved nothing. The Republic achieved nothing, except to chop off heads and to bear up Napoleone Buonaparté."

"There shall never again be Directories or Consulates."

"Just as there were not supposed to be any more kings of France?" Grantaire raised an eyebrow. "There will always be more Napoleons, more Empires. We have learned nothing. Revolution is a momentary madness. The reactionary instinct will always win over. Your beloved Republic served not the sans-culottes but the grand bourgeoisie."

Enjolras could not argue with this, as he was not himself without criticism for the Republic.

"You lay out red herrings," he replied instead. "I fight not for the mistakes of the First Republic but for the dawning of the Second. Take out your pistols. Draw your sword cane. Prouvaire said that you were good with a bayonet, and I'm sure someone will be willing to trade you one for it, or else capture one from the National Guard. You are the fiercest fighter of all of us."

Grantaire thrust his sword cane at Enjolras, followed by one of the pistols and all but one of the boxes of cartridges in his pockets.

"Let it never be said," he repeated again, "that I am not willing to make sacrifices for the revolution. You may have these, and use them to arm whoever you please, so long as it is not me. I will be here, waiting to be shot. You will forgive me if I keep one of the pistols. I will not chance being taken alive."

Enjolras took the weapons, gave him a look of terrible sternness, and left.

Grantaire drank steadily, and soon fell into a doze. He could not have said whether an hour or a whole day had passed, when he was roused from his uneasy slumber by the sound of a gunshot, far closer to him than the fighting should be. He jerked up and grasped his remaining pistol. Had the barricade already been overrun? He loaded the pistol and grasped it, then peered out the window. No, the barricade still stood. The commotion had come from one of the houses along the street. A small uproar sounded, and Grantaire gleaned, from the hubbub, that a rebel had shot a citizen for refusing him entry and the use of the upper stories of the tallest house on the street to snipe at the enemy from.

Enjolras had cornered the man, and pushed him to his knees effortlessly with his delicate, schoolboy hands. Grantaire couldn't explain how he knew what Enjolras might do next, but he did. He watched with certainty in his heart as Enjolras said some words, aimed a pistol to the man's head, and began to count the seconds on a pocket watch.

The hot hazy flush of drunkenness fled Grantaire all at once, and he snapped into cold sobriety. He sprinted down the stairs and out the door, as quick as his legs could carry him.

"Wait!" Grantaire gasped, barrelling into Enjolras.

The man at their feet gave a cry of relief, but Grantaire paid him no mind.

The terrible look on that angelic face was strange, in that he had never seen it with his own eyes before, but all too familiar, in that he had worn it himself a thousand times. Purity that bordered upon Chastity, Justice that verged upon Inevitability. It was a white cold glow, a flame that emitted bright light and no heat. It was the transformation of human savageness by belief and a higher cause into divine certainty. It was Themis, her left hand entwined with Dike over her scales, and her right raising the same sword as Nemesis. Enjolras was innocent and inevitable.

"You are not an executioner. Do not stain your hands so," Grantaire stood in between Enjolras and the man. Enjolras' aim did not so much as waver.

"Move, Grantaire," he said. "Or I will shoot through you. Do not obstruct the justice of the revolution."

Grantaire ignored him, and turned to the man at his feet. He was blubbering, and had pissed himself. How base, how ordinary, how human.

Grantaire raised his own pistol to the man's forehead, gripped him by the hair, and fired.

"Save your bullets for the National Guard," Grantaire said, almost kindly. He tucked the pistol into his waistband and wiped his hands on his trousers. "The likes of you should not dirty your hands so."

Enjolras glowed white hot with fury.

"I was prepared," he said stiffly, "for the consequences."

"Are you really? I'm not sure you understand," Grantaire shrugged, refusing to look at him.

"What that man did is frightful, what you have done is horrible. He killed, therefore I needed to kill him. He had to die, because insurrection must have its discipline. Assassination is even more of a crime here than elsewhere; we are under the eyes of the Revolution, we are the priests of the Republic, we are the victims of duty, and must not be possible to slander our combat. I have, therefore, tried that man, and condemned him to death. Why did you step in? You care not for the revolution or the Republic."

"The law is suspended here, upon the barricade, but order should not be, and neither should justice. It is as you say. And no man should be judge, jury, and executioner all at once, if there are others to share the blame. You have the authority to try him, and that is good, but in lieu of a guillotine, it is better to dirty the hands of a sinner than a priest of the Revolution."

"Upon the condemnation of that man, I judged myself also. Shall you too be condemned?"

"Yes," said Grantaire, smiling. "I welcome it, for that is just."

"It is difficult to measure your act, for it is not as easily judged as assassination," Enjolras said, thoughtfully. "Nevertheless, here is your sentence. You shall stay by my side and share my fate. As for myself, constrained as I am to do what I have done, and yet abhorring it, I have judged myself also, and you shall soon see what I have condemned myself to."

Those who listened to him shuddered.

"We will share thy fate," cried Combeferre.

Enjolras regained his eloquence and his conviction, and began a blistering speech about love. Grantaire slinked away, satisfied. He returned to the wine shop, took up at his little table again, and poured himself another drink. There were a few stray droplets of red upon his knuckles and fingernails, but his palms were clean. He put his head in his hands, and wept.

"The Republic collapsed," he said to himself, "but how many guillotined heads did the Restoration restore? None. And here I am again, a butcher. Is that all anyone will remember of Louis de Saint-Just? Is that also the only legacy that Louis-Jean-François Grantaire shall leave behind? No, no, I suppose not. They will also remember that he won the Prix De Rome in 22, and that his painting was in the salon in 24, the year Blondel got his knighthood and Gros was made baron. In a hundred years, treatises on the life of David will mention Gros, and in footnotes about Gros they may mention Grantaire, alongside Signol and Féron and the rest. An innocent enough legacy, neither soldier nor revolutionary nor Montagnard. How light it sits upon the soul, to be a footnote. Do they write biographies of Saint-Just where the footnotes mention Antoine Organt?"

Pleased, he took another draught of absinthe. Time passed. He became thoroughly drunk. He wept again. He drank some more. He loaded his pistol with another shot. He checked and rechecked his knives. He drank again, and fell dead asleep.

The next time he awoke, it was not to gunshots, but the absence of them. The room was silent, yet it was filled with people. The bottles of nitric acid by the stairs were gone. The stairs were gone. The sound of rebellion had degenerated into the sounds of slaughter. Enjolras stood by the wall, trapped, radiant. He was ready for martyrdom, and he glowed with the calm fact of it.

Regret stirred in Grantaire's breast. Fear turned his blood to ice. Understanding purged the drunkenness from his mind. He was here again, and this time not for the sake of his Republic, but for the sake of a skirmish, some failed rebellion that would become another dry forgotten footnote to greater events. 

Nevertheless, Enjolras was radiant.

Grantaire let go of the pistol, and stood up unarmed.

"Long live the Republic! Long live the Revolution! I am one of them!" He cried. Had Jean Prouvaire lived to see the sight, he might have taken satisfaction in recognising the savage, sublime glow of belief and passion that lit up Grantaire's face from the inside and rendered him beatific. Prouvaire had correctly identified Grantaire after all, that July a lifetime ago.

Grantaire walked to Enjolras with brisk strides, head held high. "Finish us at one blow," he instructed, with a voice that was used to commanding soldiers. He turned to Enjolras.

"Do you permit it?" He asked, hand outstretched.

Enjolras took his hand, smiling. He was still smiling as the report sounded.

The two young men could not have been more different in looks. One was blond, the other dark, one tall and beautiful, the other short and homely. Yet in death they were perfect mirrors of each other, two rosy youthful faces, transformed into something eternal by martyrdom. In the Convention, Enjolras would have been Saint-Just. In the Corinthe, Grantaire became Enjolras.

Enjolras remained standing, as if pinned to the wall, and only his proud golden head drooped downwards. Grantaire's hand never loosened its grip.

**Author's Note:**

> 1)Not sure if 1832 is a bit too early for the term Lorette? It seems to be a late 30's or 40's development. Unlike a grisette, who worked at least part-time, a Lorette didn't have official employment and was entirely supported by her relationships with men. Usually it's more than one dude supporting her
> 
> 2)Sorry I know nothing about art
> 
> 3)Grantaire says the constitution of the year One instead of the year Two because there's no such thing as the constitution of the year Two. There's one from year one, written by Robespierre and Saint-Just etc which never really got put into play, and one from year three, which is vastly more conservative. Saint-Just proposed the Ventôse Decrees.
> 
> 4)Assuming David is the one who painted that portrait of Saint-Just.
> 
> 5)All my love to "In the evening, when the wind blows from above" by acaramelmacchiato where Grantaire models as the pantsless guy in liberty leading the people. A classic.
> 
> 6)Signol studied under Blondel and Gros and won the Grand Prix de Rome in '30 and debuted in the salon in '24 and remained staunchly neoclassicist and anti-romanticism his whole career. Féron was also a student of Gros, won the Grand Prix in '26. He's about the same age as Grantaire, and he was a favourite of Louis-Philippe and his sons. He did a painting of Louis-Philippe arriving at the Hôtel de Ville in 1830 so Saint-Grantaire wants to rip his throat out. Thank you Wikipedia.
> 
> 7)In 1822 there was no Prix de Rome awarded for painting according to Wikipedia so here 19ish year old Saint-Grantaire won it and went to Rome for three years til 1825. The topic that year for painting was Orestes and Pylades. How could I RESIST. Saint-Just wasn't all essays and political texts - back before he was The Saint-Just he wrote a play called Arlequin Diogènes and a poem called Organt that was, well, both political and pornographic. The protag was named Antoine Organt, a libertine. Respect. It was banned but also it was a flop. So I guess maybe he could have just been an artistic nobody, since Actual Saint-Just's writing career didn't take off and he had to go into politics.


End file.
